southdavid

If you're so inclined, you can read my review of each season of "Yellowstone" logged against the final episode of the season - but now that it's all over I thought I'd put something here to sum up my overall feelings.

John Dutton (Kevin Coster) is the current custodian of the Yellowstone Ranch in Montana, that has been in his family for around 150 years. Despite their disfunction, stemming from the death of matriarch Evelyn (Gretchen Mol), the Dutton family dominate the local area. His eldest son Lee (Dave Annable) is being groomed to take over the ranch, Jamie (Wes Bentley) is the family lawyer and is being prepped for politics, Beth (Kelly Reilly) is a financier and willing to do anything to protect her father. Only youngest son Kayce (Luke Grimes) has rejected the life, living with his wife nearby having returned from the Navy. John fights, with all the tools at his disposal, to keep his land as his enemies conspire against him.

What I liked was that, despite the rhetoric that the show is for a conservative audience, it's not "old time values" propaganda. Being a cowboy, frankly, looks awful. With death and injury, a near constant risk and the crushing, all-consuming boredom of it is very real. There are no real heroes and villains in the show either, Dan played by Danny Houston and Thomas Rainwater, played by Gil Birmingham, conspire against John, but their white-collar plotting doesn't match the actual murders committed by people at the Yellowstone. John in particularly attempts to motivate his children by providing or withholding affection, he conspires with, and against them and he manipulates local authorities to his benefit.

It is a melodramatic soap opera, at heart - though particularly well written by Taylor Sheridan. Each episode seems to see some member of the cast dying, or being seriously injured, or placed in mortal peril. It's "Dallas" with better production values. It's an enjoyable time though and one that looks set to continue through its multiple spin-offs.

The final 6 episodes of "Yellowstone", delayed by the writer's strike and thrown into chaos by the departure of Kevin Coster have finally arrived, around a year after the initial 8. Whilst it's hard to shake the feeling that this is a bit of a rushed job, to find an ending from the departure of the shows leading man it's a satisfactory reset for a series that seems like it is essentially going to continue in various spin offs.

Governor Dutton apparently commits suicide in his mansion, though neither Beth (Kelly Reilly) nor Kayce (Luke Grimes) believe that this is the case, with Beth immediately blaming it on Jamie (Wes Bentley). She is technically correct, though Jamie is initially unsure about how explicit his instructions to Sarah (Dawn Olivieri) were. The rest of the ranch team are in Texas participating in a cattle saving relocation, alongside the Four Sixes Ranch, this provides some new concerns for them and means that Rip (Cole Hauser) isn't around when the news about the Governor breaks.

These last episodes do feel like they're truncating several aspects of the story, particularly the airport storyline and the reaction of Market Equities to what happens. Naturally the stories involving John and the specifics of his Governorship are dropped, and Summer (Piper Perabo) gets just a single scene to finish off her interest. It's all complicated by these episodes, certainly the first three or four, jumping backwards and forwards in time, to accommodate the fact that most of the 'cowboys away' storyline has to take place before the assassination, but they couldn't just do that whole storyline first and ignore all the rest of the characters.

Other than the rapid pace - though still finding time for a few interminable musical performances - generally this was as decent a ending as the show was going to get, given the extenuating circumstances and I look forward more to resetting with the spin offs in the near future.

"Cheaters" came to my attention with the Guardian's best television of 2022 list. I certainly enjoyed that series, though felt it ended without a definite conclusion. Fortunately, it has returned for a second run, in 2024, that explains what happens next and gives the show more of a satisfactory conclusion (I assume).

With all their secrets now aired, we rejoin the characters a few months later. Fola (Susan Wokoma) and Josh (Joshua McGuire) are in a relationship, but their inability to define it threatens to derail them. Esther (Callie Cooke) returns from travelling with a new boyfriend Lars (Ceallach Spellman) but, with nowhere else to live, returns to the flat. Zack (Jack Fox) has taken his newly discovered kink and turned it into a place to live, whilst he and Fola finalise their divorce.

So mechanically the show is still the same, in that it utilises short ten-minute episodes to tell the story in a bite sized format. There are 8 episodes this season though, ten down from the first run. It's still quite explicit and still quite funny. It does feel less essential though than the first - that ran on a dichotomy of wanting the cheating couple to get together, but also knowing that there will be pain all round when they're discovered. This runs on whether or not Fola and Josh will get together properly - which is much more standard romantic comedy fare.

Again, this isn't the case of a good show becoming bad, more the case of a good show become fine. Performances from the central four are still good with Wokoma again exceptional and I did laugh with it - but the first run was better. This does feel like it could and perhaps should be the end of the show, though if they do decide to go again, I'll certainly be back.